Thanks!

A HUGE thank you to my friends who came out to meet Georges last Monday in Munich and who were more than generous in supporting his program. Thanks for taking the time to hear his story. I hope you found his journey interesting and inspiring. Thanks for your concern in what he's doing to help some people learn to help themselves in a part of the world many of us will probably never see. He really enjoyed meeting you all!

For those who missed his talk, he (quite eloquently!) spoke about how and why he decided to go to Amadi from Rome before completing his studies in 2004, his first impressions of the village (you can imagine how different it was coming from Rome where he was studying for a couple of years!) and facing the reality of the country he is from. I also thought it was interesting how he went from initially beginning this as more of a social program - organizing soccer matches, clearing land, repairing roads, and sewing training - to realizing this wasn't enough. "What are they going to do play soccer their whole lives?" While that is a valuable activity to both boys and girls (they still play regular matches, although he was sad to report that one of the coaches recently died of AIDs), he felt something more needed to be done.

When he met a girl named Rose and heard her story, that's when it clicked for him: he would help young people with serious problems continue their studies, with a particular focus on young, unmarried mothers who deserved (and desired) to be helped.

Kudos to Georges for an excellent overview of the program - your English teacher in Dublin would have been very impressed with how well you spoke! And I hope you are close to reaching your goal of at least keeping the current students enrolled in school for the year!